Woman arrested for trying to enter maternity ward with fake baby

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Tonya Whiteny, 42, was arrested on charges of trespassing after allegedly attempting to access a secure maternity ward with a lifelike baby doll in Merced on Saturday (Photo: Merced Police Department)

A Merced woman was arrested for allegedly trying to enter a maternity ward on two occasions while carrying a lifelike baby doll, police said.

Tonya Whiteny, 42, was booked on suspicion of trespassing after trying to enter the newborn baby unit of Mercy Medical Center Merced, first on Saturday then again on Monday, with an unidentified male companion.

Whiteny and the man were treating the doll as if it was a real child, cooing at it, changing its diapers and posing for pictures holding it, according to a report from KSFN-TV in Fresno.

She told police that she was trying to sell the doll to the hospital as a training tool, but police were skeptical of that explanation.

“It almost sounds reasonable,” Merced police Capt. Tom Trinidad told The Chronicle. “But if you’re trying to sell something, you go the business office. Any businessperson would know that the nurses in the maternity ward aren’t responsible for purchasing.”

Instead, police are looking into the possibility that Whiteny may have been trying to enter the ward to abduct a newborn and replace it with the doll, Trinidad said.

“We’re very concerned that she could have snuck in there and swapped in the doll and left,” he said.

Those concerns are heightened in Merced, where 20 years ago a newborn was abducted from a maternity ward in a hospital that has since shut down, according to Trinidad.

He said that at no point did the couple actually gain access to the maternity ward.

“Mercy Medical Center Merced has established procedures in place to help ensure that our security standards are maintained in any circumstance,” said Bob McLaughlin, a hospital spokesman. “We are pleased to see that our hospital’s security measures worked effectively and the couple was denied access through security doors.”

Merced police sent out a flyer warning other hospitals in the area to be on the lookout for suspicious people trying to access restricted areas, and asked for anyone with additional information to contact them.